I send a semi-daily email delivering insights into leadership in exponential times. For entrepreneurs, corporate irritants and change makers. Raw, unfiltered and opinionated. It is called The Heretic and here is the dispatch from 2013-08-15:

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STOP PUSSYFOOTING AROUND

On the back of my post from yesterday on failing, my friends at the Unreasonable Institute reposted an article I wrote for them on how Mozilla made it big and published a quote from me to go alongside with:

“You can’t afford to play by the rules. So don’t. Ignore what has been said, ignore what has been done, and find your own way. Write your own rules and fight. You have to realize that in a startup your fight is a fight for survival.”

It’s funny to see something you wrote a while ago being turned into a public quote and it made me realize how much I mean what I said in the article.

The media often portrays entrepreneurship as this amazing journey where the protagonists always smile, drink copious amounts of the latest energy drink of choice, work and play hard and generally have a jolly good time.

Let me tell you — startups are magical. They are addictive and a ton of fun. But they are also brutal and freakin’ hard. Every day you live on borrowed time (until you become profitable you literally live on time borrowed from whoever gave you money) and you are in constant survival mode. No pussyfooting around. Better get your survival instincts sharpened and get ready for the journey.